Armchair Commentary's Amazon Blog

I didn't tune in to see Taylor Swift hosting Saturday Night Live last night, but I hear one of the highlights was the Twilight spoof, called Firelight, and starring Swift as "Stella." Watch it below or on YouTube. --David

This is the third trailer for the new Sherlock Holmes movie, opening on Christmas Day 2009, and starring Robert Downey Jr. as the title sleuth, Jude Law as Dr. Watson, and Rachel McAdams as Irene Adler, and directed by Guy Ritchie. I like Downey and McAdams a lot, but the trailer's mix of high-impact action and comedy seems like it could be really good or really, er, not good. For my money, Jeremy Brett is still the best Holmes, though I know Basil Rathbone has his fans and there's an intriguing Peter Cushing version coming out this December. --David

As we've done for 10 years now, our editorial team has compiled their list of the Best Movies & TV of 2009. Over the next few days we'll be publishing a number of our genre lists in this space, but we'll start with the basics: the top 100 DVDs of 2009 (in other words, DVDs that were released in 2009). Agree? Disagree? Post a comment and let us know. Our first 10 of the 100:

1. Slumdog Millionaire: The Oscar winner for Best Picture centers around a young Indian man competing on a game show with the highest possible stakes
2. Gran Torino: Clint Eastwood directed and stars in this riveting drama about racial tolerance
3. Milk:  Sean Penn won an Oscar for his portrayal of San Francisco politician Harvey Milk
4. Mad Men: Season 2: AMC's period piece is a two-time Emmy winner for Outstanding Drama
5. The Hangover: The raunchy comedy was one of the surprise box-office hits of the year
6. Star Trek: J.J. Abrams' reinvention of the fan-favorite franchise soars to new heights
7. True Blood: The Complete First Season: Compelling HBO series about the vampires among us, and definitely not for the Twilight crowd
8. The Wrestler: Mickey Rourke won accolades for his depiction of one man's professional and personal comeback
9. Up: Great as we've come to expect from Pixar; charming in ways we didn't expect
10. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: The sixth film of the series is the darkest yet, as Harry and his friends confront He Who Must Not Be Named

See the rest of the top 100 DVDs, the top 100 Blu-ray discs, and many other lists at http://www.amazon.com/bestmovies2009.

Here's a look at upcoming movies. Click on link to sign up when they are released on DVD and Blu-ray. (Release dates subject to change).

Salt (starring Angelina Jolie, dir. by Philip Noyce)-- Angelina is blonde! Angelina is brunette! Angelina does what she does best: kick ass. Here, a CIA official named Evelyn Salt is accused of being a Russian spy and goes on the run. This teaser doesn't show much, but Jolie took over the role after Tom Cruise(!) vacated the role (yes, Salt was supposed to be a guy), so it's a high-profile project regardless. (July 23rd)

Avatar(starring Sam Worthington, dir. by James Cameron) -- Terminator Salvation's Worthington goes front and center in Cameron's highly anticipated first theatrical feature since Titanic. Worthington is a wheelchair-bound Marine who must befriend the blue-skinned "savages" on a new planet via a created "avatar" so they can mine the rich resources of their planet. The end of the trailer splays all of Cameron's other achievements, reminding you that despite any hesitations you had about his crazy projects in the past, he's always delivered. (Dec. 18)

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Gemma Arterton; directed by Mike Newell & Alexander Witt)-- Jerry Bruckheimer defied the odds and made a Disneyland ride called Pirates of the Caribbean into a billion-dollar franchise and Johnny Depp into an Oscar nominee. While Prince of Persia is definitely full of the visual FX, it doesn't have the name recognition, and Gyllenhaal, all brawn, dirty and hewn and sporting a British accent, looks like he dressed up as a Spartan from 300 for Halloween. In other words, it'll take more than muscle to prove he works in this role. (May 28)

If you looked at the photo below (taken as part of the 20th anniversary of Say Anything, re-creating the iconic John Cusack scene), what caption would you write? --Ellen

November's Horror Spotlight DVD is the 80's cult classic Re-Animator. Read below for Ryan from Bloody-Disgusting.com's review of the DVD, and buy a copy of the DVD for your own viewing pleasure at 48% off all this month. Enjoy! -- Lisanne

It’s been 15 years since I last watched Re-Animator.   Viewing the Anchor Bay DVD this week, I felt like I was hanging out with some old friends from summer camp that I hadn’t seen in years.  Where has the time gone?   Justifiably groomed for cult classic status since its 1985 release, the H.P. Lovecraft-inspired, Stuart Gordon-directed horror-comedy still delivers the goods.

Daniel Cain is a bright young med student on the fast track to the top. Although his obsessive techniques with critical patients occasionally get him into trouble, Cain is accomplished enough—both academically and socially—to be admired by his professors, and he even gets away with dating the dean’s hot daughter (Gordon staple Barbara Crampton).   Herbert West, an eccentric new transfer student with some decidedly unethical methods, shows up on the scene, immediately throwing  Cain’s naive worldview out of whack.   In the role that made him famous, Jeffrey Combs plays Herbert West as a dour-faced cross between a science super-nerd and Norman Bates.    West ‘s ideas regarding the animation of dead tissue are controversial , and although Cain is understandably disturbed when Herbert kills and reanimates his house cat (twice), he is also intrigued.  West may be just as unstable as his life-giving “re-agent” formula, but there’s no doubt he can re-animate the dead.  But can he control them?   It turns out the re-animated dead are plagued with the need to commit atrocious acts of violence.  As his experiments spin further and further out of control, West must go to even greater extremes to reign in his self-made monsters.

Anchor Bay’s 2-disc DVD features the 86-minute unrated version of the film (rather than the 95-minute R-rated version), and it comes loaded with extras, including a surprisingly extensive retrospective, interviews with cast and crew, deleted and extended scenes, and all sorts of other good stuff. - Ryan Daley, Bloody-Disgusting.com

Learn more about the critically acclaimed film Food, Inc. from producers and contributors to the film in this compelling Q&A.

How did this film initially come about?
Kenner: Eric Schlosser and I had been wanting to do a documentary version of his book, Fast Food Nation.  And, for one reason or another, it didn't happen. By the time Food, Inc. started to come together, we began talking and realized that all food has become like fast food, and all food is being created in the same manner as fast food.

How has fast food changed the food we buy at the supermarket?
Schlosser: The enormous buying power of the fast food industry helped to transform the entire food production system of the United States.  So even when you purchase food at the supermarket, you’re likely to be getting products that came from factories, feedlots and suppliers that emerged to serve the fast food chains.

How many years did it take to do this film and what were the challenges?
Kenner: From when Eric and I began talking, about 6 or 7 years.  The film itself about 2 ½ years.  It has taken a lot longer than we expected because we were denied access to so many places.

Pearlstein: When Robby brought me into the project, he was adamant about wanting to hear all sides of the story, but it was nearly impossible to gain access onto industrial farms and into large food corporations.  They just would not let us in.  It felt like it would have been easier to penetrate the Pentagon than to get into a company that makes breakfast cereal.  The legal challenges on this film were also unique.  We found it necessary to consult with a first amendment lawyer throughout the entire filming process.

Who or what influenced your film?
Kenner: This film was really influenced by Eric Schlosser and Fast Food Nation, but then as we were progressing and had actually gotten funding, it became very influenced as well by Michael Pollan and his book Omnivore’s Dilemma. 

And then, as we went out into the world, we became really incredibly influenced by a lot of the farmers we met.

What was the most surprising thing you learned?
Kenner: As we set out to find out how our food was made, I think the thing that really became most shocking is when we were talking to a woman, Barbara Kowalcyk, who had lost her son to eating a hamburger with E. coli, and she’s now dedicated her life to trying to make the food system safer. It’s the only way she can recover from the loss of her child. But when I asked her what she eats, she told me she couldn't tell me because she would be sued if she answered.

Or we see Carol possibly losing her chicken farm … or we see Moe, a seed cleaner who’s just being sued for amounts that there’s no way he can pay, even though he’s not guilty of anything.  Then we realized there’s something going on out there that supersedes foods. Our rights are being denied in ways that I had never imagined. And it was scary and shocking. And that was my biggest surprise.

So, what does our current industrialized food system say about our values as a nation?
Pollan: It says we value cheap, fast and easy when it comes to food like so many other things, and we have lost any connection to where our food comes from.

Kenner: I met a cattle rancher and he said, you know, we used to be scared of the Soviet Union or we used to think we were so much better than the Soviet Union because we had many places to buy things.  And we had many choices.  We thought if we were ever taken over, we’d be dominated where we’d have to buy one thing from one company, and how that’s not the American way.  And he said you look around now, and there’s like one or two companies dominating everything in the food world. We’ve become what we were always terrified of.

And that just always haunted me – how could this happen in America?  It seems very un-American that we would be so dominated, and then so intimidated by the companies that are dominating this marketplace.

How has the revolving door relationship between giant food companies and Washington affected the food industry?
Pearlstein: We discovered that the food industry has managed to shape a lot of laws in their favor.  For example, massive factory farms are not considered real factories, so they are exempt from emissions standards that other factories face.  A surprising degree of regulation is voluntary, not mandatory, which ends up favoring the industry. 

What have been the consequences for the American consumer?
Kenner: Most American consumers think that we are being protected.  But that is not the case.  Right now the USDA does not have the authority to shut down a plant that is producing contaminated meat.  The FDA and the USDA have had their inspectors cut back.  And it’s for these companies now to self-police, and what we’ve found is, when there’s a financial interest involved, these companies would rather make the money and be sued than correct it.  Self-policing has really just been a miserable failure.  And I think that's been really quite harmful to the American consumer and to the American worker. 

Pearlstein: The food industry has succeeded in keeping some very important information about their products hidden from consumers.  It’s outrageous that genetically modified foods don’t need to be labeled.  Today more than 70% of processed foods in the supermarket are genetically modified and we have absolutely no way of knowing.  Whatever your position, you should have the right to make informed choices, and we don’t.  Now the FDA is contemplating whether or not to label meat and milk from cloned cows.  It seems very basic that consumers should have the right to know if they’re eating a cloned steak.

Is it possible to feed a nation of millions without this kind of industrialized processing?
Pollan: Yes.  There are alternative ways of producing food that could improve Americans’ health.  Quality matters as much as quantity and yield is not the measure of a healthy food system.  Quantity improves a population’s health up to a point; after that, quality and diversity matters more.  And it’s wrong to assume that the industrialized food system is feeding everyone well or keeping the population healthy.  It’s failing on both counts.

There is a section of the film that reveals how illegal immigrants are the faceless workers that help to bring food to our tables.  Can you give us a profile of the average worker?
Schlosser: The typical farm worker is a young, Latino male who does not speak English and earns about $10,000 a year.  The typical meatpacking worker has a similar background but earns about twice that amount.  A very large proportion of the nation’s farm workers and meatpackers are illegal immigrants.

Why are there so many Spanish-speaking workers?
Kenner: The same thing that created obesity in this country, which is large productions of cheap corn, has put farmers out of work in foreign countries, whether it’s Mexico, Latin America or around the world.  And those farmers can no longer grow food and compete with the U.S.’ subsidized food.  So a lot of these farmers needed jobs and ended up coming into this country to work in our food production.

And they have been here for a number of years.  But what’s happened is that we’ve decided that it’s no longer in the best interests of this country to have them here.  But yet, these companies still need these people and they’re desperate, so they work out deals where they can have a few people arrested at a certain time so it doesn’t affect production. But it affects people’s lives.  And these people are being deported, put in jail and sent away, but yet, the companies can go on and it really doesn’t affect their assembly line.  And what happens is that they are replaced by other, desperate immigrant groups.

Could the American food industry exist without illegal immigrants?
Schlosser: The food industry would not only survive, but it would have a much more stable workforce.  We would have much less rural poverty.  And the annual food bill of the typical American family would barely increase.  Doubling the hourly wage of every farm worker in this country might add $50 at most to a family’s annual food bill.

What are scientists doing to our food and is it about helping food companies’ bottom line or about feeding a growing population?
Schlosser: Some scientists are trying to produce foods that are healthier, easier to grow, and better for the environment.  But most of the food scientists are trying to create things that will taste good and can be made cheaply without any regard to their social or environmental consequences.

I am not opposed to food science.  What matters is how that science is used … and for whose benefit.

Can a person eat a healthy diet from things they buy in the supermarket if they are not buying organic? If so, how?
Pollan: Yes, the supermarkets still carry real food.  The key is to shop the perimeter of the store and stay out of the middle where most of the processed food lurks.

How are low-income families impacted at the supermarket?
Kenner: Things are really stacked against low-income families in this country.  There is a definite desire of the food companies to sell more product to these people because they have less time, they’re working really hard and they have fewer hours in their day to cook.  And the fast food is very reasonably priced.  Coke is selling for less than water.  So when these things are happening, it’s easier for low-income families sometimes to just go in and have a quick meal if they don’t get home until 10 o’clock at night.  At the moment, our food is unfairly priced towards bad food.

And, in the same way that tobacco companies went after low-income people because they were heavy users, food companies are going after low-income people because they can market to them, they can make it look very appealing.

What can low-income families do to eat healthier?
Schlosser: As much as possible, they can avoid cheap, processed foods and fast foods.  It’s possible to eat well and inexpensively.  But it takes more time and effort to do so, and that’s not easy when you’re working two jobs and trying to just to keep your head above water.  The sad thing is that these cheap foods are ultimately much more expensive when you factor in the costs of all the health problems that come later.

Pollan: It’s possible to eat healthy food on a budget but it takes a greater investment of time.  If you are willing to cook and plan ahead, you can eat local, sustainable food on a budget.

If someone wanted to get involved and help change the system, what would you suggest they do?
Pearlstein: I hope people will want to be more engaged in the process of eating and shopping for food.  We have learned that there are a lot of different fronts to fight on this one, and people can see what most resonates with them.  Maybe it’s really just “voting with their forks” – eating less meat, buying different food, buying from companies they feel good about, going to farmers markets.

People can try to find a CSA – community supported agriculture – where you buy a share in a farm and get local food all year.  That really helps support farmers and you get fresh, seasonal food.  On the local political level, people can work on food access issues, like getting more markets into low income communities, getting better lunch programs in schools, trying to get sodas out of schools.  And on a national level, we’ve learned that reforming the Farm Bill would have a huge influence on our food system. It requires some education, but it is something we should care about.

What do you hope people take away from this film?
Schlosser: I hope it opens their eyes.

Kenner: That things can change in this country. It changed against the big tobacco companies.  We have to influence the government and readjust these scales back into the interests of the consumer.  We did it before, and we can do it again.

Pollan: A deeper knowledge of where their food comes from and a sense of outrage over how their food is being produced and a sense of hope and possibility of the alternatives springing up around the country.  Food, Inc. is the most important and powerful film about our food system in a generation.

BOX OFFICE RESULTS: This Is It, the Michael Jackson concert film, drew $21.3 million over the weekend, leading Sony to extended its planned two-week run through Thanksgiving. In other new releases,  continued its strong run with $16.5 million. The rest of the top 5: Paranormal Activity ($16.5 million), Law Abiding Citizen ($7.3 million), Couples Retreat ($6.1 million), and Saw VI ($5.6 million)

GOOD NEWS FOR TV: After being abruptly canceled by NBC before it began airing its second season, Southland has been picked up by TNT and will start airing episodes on January. (EW.com)

TV CASTING NEWS: Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio (The Color of Money) will replace Eric Bogosian in Law & Order: Criminal Intent; Nick Zano (Cougar Town) will move into Melrose Place beginning in January; Gregory Itzin, best known as evil President Charles Logan on 24, will return to the series for a multip-episode arc. Scott Foley (The Unit, Felicity) will join Cougar Town for three episodes. (EW.com)

MOVIE CASTING NEWS: Katie Holmes will replace Liv Tyler in the indie film The Romantics. The film centers around eight college friends who reunite for the wedding of one of their pals (Anna Paquin). Josh Duhamel, Malin Ackerman, Elijah Wood and Adam Brody also star.

--Ellen